She was essential to the company's expansion, flying her own plane to small airfields across the country to sell water purification kits.

She has been noted for philanthropic work as well as her entrepreneurial success, and has received a number of awards and honors as a result of her contributions to both business and chemistry.

[7][5] At Iowa State University, Kitty met Nellie May Naylor, a chemist in the home economics department who interested her in chemistry.

Seeing how the water-treatment plant worked gave Clifford the idea for a process and a product: a simplified method of analysis that would enable workers to treat water with powdered formulas rather than heavy chemical solutions.

[6][8] Their first successful product was a simplified titration method for measuring hardness in drinking water, which they packaged in easy-to-use testing kits.

[8] She developed a direct mail marketing campaign, and earned the nickname "Kitty" Hach by flying her plane across the United States, sometimes landing on rural dirt airstrips in bad weather, delivering water quality testing kits to municipalities of all sizes.

As of 2012, about 70 percent of municipalities in the United States used Hach Company instrumentation, allowing them to detect impurities in water at the parts-per-billion level.

[8] Under Kitty Hach's management, the company developed an employee base of over 900 people and became one of the top women owned businesses in the United States.

[14] After Clifford's death in 1990, Kitty was named Hach Co.'s chairman and CEO and her son Bruce assumed the role of president.